Advice
Managing Your Responsibilities When Your Loved One is Ill
January 24, 2025
As a young person, you might have a lot of things on your plate: there’s school, college or university – exams, tests and assignments; you might have chores at home that you are expected to take care of – cleaning your room or taking care of your pet, if you have one; maybe you have siblings that you need to walk to school, or help with their homework; there might be some after-school classes or activities you take part in; you also might have to manage relationships with other young people around you – there might be arguments in friend groups, relationships, or breakups. And now, on top of it all, someone close to you is seriously ill.
Having a seriously ill loved one, apart from bringing you many feelings like stress or anger, can also sometimes mean you have more responsibilities or less time to do things you normally did. You might have to help around the house more, or visit your loved one in the hospital – or maybe you find it hard to focus on your homework because of all these emotions and issues that the illness brought with it.
In this post, we’ll look at some things that can be helpful when managing your responsibilities when a person close to you is seriously ill.
Plan
Try to plan your time as much as possible. Use a planner or a calendar app on your phone (or a good old fashioned hand-written list!) to track important dates. You could also try priority matrix where you divide your tasks into four categories: ‘urgent and important’, ‘not urgent but important’, ‘urgent but not important’ and ‘not urgent and not important’. By using this you can prioritise tasks that need to be completed as soon as possible and plan for other tasks that you have more time for – it can also help you to see which tasks you could ask someone else to do, or ones that don’t need to be completed if you don’t have time for them.
Talk
Sometimes talking can help you get things off your chest and clear your mind, so you can focus more on other things you have to do. You can talk to a family member or a friend or you can book a chat with our experienced Wellbeing Advisors. If you don’t feel like talking to someone, you could try journaling or scribble art to just get everything out – often you’ll find that the big thing you were stressing about might not be so big after all when you break it all down.
Ask for help
If you feel like you are struggling, ask for help. You can ask your family members or friends to help you with some things, such as walking your dog or giving you a lift to the hospital instead of walking. If you are struggling with your assignments, ask for an extension, and chat to teachers/lecturers/supervisors about what’s going on at home to see what support can be put in place. Remember, asking for help is a sign of strength, not weakness!
Take care of yourself
Remember to take care of yourself. Don’t be too hard on yourself and allow some time to rest, as it’s a difficult time and your wellbeing is important – make sure you eat and sleep well, and that you move your body. A loved one’s illness might be short term or go on for months or years, so where possible try to include rest and relaxation in your schedule from the start of this journey so things don’t build up so much that you get to the point of physical and mental burnout.
With an illness like cancer, there can be times that seem really busy with everything going on – new treatments starting (or ending), operations, doctors appointments etc, then there are times that might be a bit quieter where your loved might feel OK for a while and not much seems to be happening. Creating routines can therefore be difficult, but make sure you always schedule some time for doing activities that you like to destress and unwind, whether that be a hobby or self care method like taking a warm bath. Try not to feel guilty that you are taking time for you – the famous saying “you can’t pour from an empty cup” really is true, in that you can’t help others if you aren’t helping yourself too!
